sight, it might seem that all this unusual kindness was
superfluous, and of no avail. This, however, was not really the case,
since the crew of the second schooner was of much real service in
forwarding the equipment of the disabled vessel. Beaufort has an excellent
harbour for vessels of a light draught of water like our two sealers; but
the town is insignificant, and extra labourers, especially those of an
intelligence suited to such work, very difficult to be had. At the bottom,
therefore, Roswell Gardiner found his friendly assistants of much real
advantage, the two crews pushing the work before them with as much
rapidity as suited even a seaman's impatience. Aided by the crew of his
consort, Gardiner got on fast with his repairs, and on the afternoon of
the second day after he had entered Beaufort, he was ready to sail once
more; his schooner probably in a better state for service than the day she
left Oyster Pond.

The lightning-line did not exist at the period of which we are writing. It
is our good fortune to be an intimate acquaintance of the distinguished
citizen who has bestowed this great gift on his own country--one that will
transmit his name to posterity, side by side with that of Fulton. In his
case, as in that of the last-named inventor, attempts have been made to
rob him equally of the honours and the profits of his very ingenious
invention. As respects the last, we hold that it is every hour becoming
less and less possible for any American to maintain his rights against
numbers. There is no question that the government of this great Republic
was intended to be one of well-considered and upright principles, in which
certain questions are to be referred periodically to majorities, as the
wisest and most natural, as well as the most just mode of disposing of
them. Such a government, well administered, and with an accurate
observance of its governing principles, would probably be the best that
human infirmity will allow men to administer; but when the capital mistake
is made of supposing that mere numbers are to control all things,
regardless of those great fundamental laws that the state has adopted for
its own restraint, it may be questioned if so loose, and capricious, and
selfish a system, is not in great danger of becoming the very worst scheme
of polity that cupidity ever set in motion. The tendency--not the _spirit_
of the institutions, the two things being the very antipodes of each
other, though